"How's Your Leg?"

Remember my blog last year about losing my Baylor QB to a torn ACL for the year?

He started running last week...

I think right there I realized what a different injury a torn ACL is compared to a broken kneecap.

I've read several stories of "players" having knee injuries... but until you drill down into it, there aren't a lot that have the broken kneecap. In fact, I've just seen it happen with basketball players. This leads me to ask, "How in the heck do you recover from this? How do you go back to playing?"

Honestly... I don't know.

As for me, this "recovery" has been a lot more painful than I ever imagined. Let's travel back a few months...

Before my 2nd surgery, I couldn't wait to get those dang wires out of my knee. It hurt just to walk... the grinding and limited mobility really wore on me. Or if I was walking, sometimes I'd have to stop because I honestly thought a wire got "caught."

Then I met "Nurse Ratchet" (OK, really a Physician's Assistant) who told me the week before the surgery that I had a painful recovery ahead of me. She even said that it would take me several months to get through all of this.

Well, next week I hit 3 months since my last surgery... and it still hurts.

So, here's how I can possibly describe what is going on. I'm assuming everyone reading this has a good knee. Go ahead and lift your lower leg. Or touch your knee... feel how the bones are shaped under your skin. Stand on it... probably doesn't hurt to put weight on it, does it?

Mine feels like a clenched fist. I'm serious. First, it's still swollen. It's large and in charge... probably a size and a half compared to my other knee. Second, you can feel the bumps... almost like little grains of gravel... on the bone itself. It's not smooth like the other one... it has ridges and hard edges.

Oh yeah, and have I mentioned that it still hurts? All the time. It hurts to lightly touch it. I think it's due to the swelling... so I put ice on it quite a bit, but it's always sore. I wake up and it's sore. I walk and it's sore. I put it up when I get home... and it's sore. Sore. Sore. Sore.

Stairs: Still a problem. I can go up about one flight and I'm done. Going up more than that... not a fun time. I tend to stick to elevators and escalators whenever I can. Going down is even worse... I don't have the support to go down with my left leg without holding onto a railing.

So... that's life as I know it in the land of the "recovery zone." I'm trying... I'm pushing myself to walk farther or take on that flight of stairs or to lift more. But, it's a long process.

Last fall, I was wondering if I could be running by January 1. Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that again. Just stating the facts...